Manchester Mini Maker Faire

I visited the MOSI mini maker faire this weekend and took a few pictures. It's a really small event compared to others in the world. However, 'owt is better than nowt and it's great to see local makers turning out to support this event in its third year.Having 3 under 12s with me meant I had little chance to take all the pictures I wanted to. I got some though...

There was a soldering workshop in the main foyer. The task was to build a simple circuit which comprised of a battery, switch and a couple of colur cycling LEDs. My posse had a try..and did quite well considering it was their first time at soldering. Credits to the guys on the stand who had the patience of saints.....

An artist called "Dutch Cyclist" had mad life size Lego heads that the kids found enticing.....

The majority of the Makers were house in the 1830 Warehouse. This was the first railway warehouse in the world, and seems an appropriate place to encourage innovation:

Leeds Hackerspace had a cool water feature which incorporated a LED strobe. This slowed down the water stream to give a really cool display that my youngest found irresistible.

Leeds were also showing a large RGB LED cube that looked great:

York Hackerspace had a great space themed game that required players to co-operate with eath other to win:

Hacman, my local Hackerspace had a stand showing what the members have been up to:

MOSI Mini Maker Faire

I went to the Mini Maker Faire at the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry today.
It was great. Not on the scale of US events (hence mini) but there was some interesting stuff:


A huge model railway. They wisely kept the model railway enthusiasts isolated from everyone else by keeping them in the power hall. No idea what gauge it was but it was bigger than OO:

The majority of the exhibits were in the 1830's warehouse:
This guy had a Atmega based audio synthesiser. Just plug in a MIDI keyboard and go. The analogue filters could be patched with leads Korg style:

This stand had a pair of metal chimes that were played by a solenoid powered hammer. The hammerwas moved to the appropriate note by a stepper motor:

This lady inspired my son with a collection of model spaceships made from bottles and other bits. We bought her book:

More wacky audio:

This 13 year old kid had made all the models here:

Nophead and Mary + Wes at the mendel90 stand:

Lifesize Operation!:

Crazy golf with Minecraft inspired finale:

Audio generation and art mixed. This set up seemed to be designed to make as much noise as possible with as much redundant (i.e. glued together with no power applied) circuitry as possible. The kids loved it:

It was a great, free day out. MOSI is a great place to take the kids at any time. But we really enjoyed the Faire. Can't wait for the next one.